“San Diego and USD were the linchpins of my career, starting with playing for Phil Woolpert, then getting an unbelievable opportunity to be a head coach probably before my time.

“USD made me a total person. My maturation started there. And it was a profound change. The fundamentals I learned at USD sustain me. Part of me will always be on that hill.

“I love that place.”

In the 39 years since he departed USD, Bickerstaff has become a prominent force in professional basketball with a resume that includes work as a coach, general manager and scout in the National Basketball Association as well as stints with the Harlem Globetrotters and the WNBA.

Wednesday night, Bickerstaff will join Olympic sprinter Monique Henderson, basketball star Hambone Williams and local football legend C.R. Roberts as the 2012 inductees into the Breitbard Hall of Fame in ceremonies during the annual Salute to the Champions dinner at the Town & Country Convention Center in Mission Valley.

Unlike the other three, Bickerstaff was not raised in San Diego.

“I am deeply honored and a bit surprised they would remember me,” Bickerstaff said last week while on the road as an assistant coach with the Portland Trail Blazers.

Bickerstaff’s time in San Diego was relatively short. He arrived in 1963. He departed in 1973.

But in just over a decade, Bickerstaff went from being a college player to one of the hottest commodities in basketball as USD’s head coach. In 1969, at the age of 24, former Toreros player Bickerstaff became both the youngest head basketball coach (at the time) in the NCAA as well as one of the few black head coaches at the time.

“Looking back, the school and the people in charge probably had more confidence and belief in me than I had earned,” said Bickerstaff. “I was arrogant enough to think I was ready.

“But I didn’t get ready by myself. And I was never alone. It’s great to be in an environment where everyone was letting you be your own man while helping any way they could.”

And to think that Bickerstaff had no intention of attending USD as he and his uncle Lem Lemmons headed west from Benham, Ky., in 1963 in a 1956 Mercury.

Bickerstaff planned to follow Lemmons and play for Cal Western and fellow coaching great Bob Kloppenburg.

“Cal Western also had a beautiful campus out on Point Loma overlooking the ocean,” said Bickerstaff. “But as soon as I visited USD, I remember touring the campus with Cliff Ashford, I decided to enroll there.